Game:

Imperishable Night (2004)

Duration: 6:01

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1

It's another group fight and this one is honestly a bit mean.

Alice decides to counter your party with a 4-woman party of her own. Alice is the leader and (at the start of the fight) the ailment expert, flinging SIL and PAR inducing spells at your party. When she starts losing dolls, she starts using her personal attacks. These attacks are pretty dangerous to deal with since, despite being a Magician, Alice has at least one DEF-targeting spell. This means high MND, low DEF characters like Patchouli and Minoriko are always in danger in this fight.

Dolls make up the rest of Alice's party; there is Healing Light, a support doll that can choose between a weak, ineffectual group heal or Weakening Prayer, an (honestly pretty ridiculous) debuff that lowers its victims stats by -50%. She is also scripted to use a powerful single target heal when one of her allies has less than 50%. It's basically a full heal for the dolls (it heals for 10K, and all the Dolls have 12K HP). It recovers around 1/3 of Alice's HP (since she has 32K HP).

The good news is that Healing Light cannot use its powerful, single target heal on its self. The bad news is that the doll has high defenses boosted by DEF and MND debuffs. Despite this, Wriggle's PSN and Patchouli's Silent Selene will still make short work of the support doll.

The other dolls have much simpler AI.

Beautiful Light is the physical powerhouse. It only has single targets like Slash, Attack and Shield Bash (which damages and inflicts PAR). It has high DEF. Its weaknesses are its low MND and PAR (which can be inflicted by Cirno and Reimu).

Magical Light is the reverse; it only uses magical, elemental AOEs. Its AOEs have no special effects, but it targets random elements and certain characters (Minoriko, Wriggle, Cirno) will die if hit by certain ones (FIR). It has high MND. Its weaknesses are low DEF and SPD debuffs (Cirno only).

Like I said, this is a pretty mean fight. There are parts to this fight I like but then there's stuff like:

-Weakening Prayer's absurd -50% to all stats
-Beautiful Light randomly sniping slots 3 and 4
-Alice spamming SIL and PAR when only Meiling can heal ailments

The ailment spam is the most obnoxious part of this fight. I had to grind for a Yamabiko Necklace to make sure Meiling was protected from SIL and could remove it from other characters. But I didn't have any Rings from Wriggle's recruitment quest, so Meiling could still be PAR'd. The only counter play was having Sakuya increase Meiling's SPD (so she gets out of PAR faster). I could also bring in other healers, but that doesn't remove the problem (since the new healer can ALSO be PAR'd or SIL'd).

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Strategy wise, I went with:

-Two physical tanks in Slots 1 and 2.

-Slot 4 for Minoriko in most situations (though Patchy borrows the slot to snipe the Healing Doll). To be in that slot, Minoriko needs the Frozen Frog and Bomb Ring (to cover her FIR and CLD affinities). Note that this only protects Minoriko in the first phase. Once Healing Light is dead, Minoriko is always in danger of being 1-shotted by Alice's Little Legion.

-Slot 3 depends on the enemy:

--If Beautiful Light / the Shield Doll is about to get its turn, put a physical character there, like Youmu or Wriggle (just anyone who can take a physical hit).

--If Magical Light / the Magic Doll is about to get its turn, put a character like Patchouli or Reimu there (just anyone who can tank magic attacks and/or doesn't have a cripplingly bad affinity for any element).

-If both Dolls are about to get their turn... good luck lol. It's sometimes unavoidable. This is why you need to use PAR and SPD debuffs: to create gaps between the two Dolls' turns.

-Use Wriggle's group PSN early. One cast consistently does about 6K damage (half of the Lights / Dolls HP). The single target PSN is really good on Alice. BUT sometimes Alice refuses to get PSN'd, which is a bummer because she's dangerous and has a LOT of HP.

Once the Healer is dead, focus all your attacks on Alice. It's tempting to target the Dolls, but Wriggle's PSN will drain their HP to 1 while Alice has a lot of extra HP. Alice is also more likely to use her personal spells (like Little Legion) if she's alone, so it's better to keep the Dolls alive for a bit.

No matter how you approach it, this is a messy fight that gets even messier once Healing Light is dead. I think this fight is genius in some ways (I like having to alternate slot 3 depending on which Doll is about to act), but other elements are dubious (like giving you only 1 ailment healer).

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Character Builds:

Alice: I much prefer her LOT2 incarnation. This version of Alice provides early non-SPD debuffs and DEF and MND targeting, but is generally not that great in bosses due to her unfavorable formulas (unless it's a boss with low DEF and FIR affinity). FWIW she's very good for randoms / dungeon exploration. Going with a MAG build.

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